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Teaching Bruno to bring ball bacl

Hi.
so far we have progressed to Bruno chasing the tennis ball after I throw it. But when he gets to it, he noses it a bit, maybe grabs it with his mouth and then just runs off without the ball and the game begins again. Don't get me wrong, I am pretty stoked that Bruno, on his own, finds it fun to chase the ball but I do not know how to teach him to bring it back

I never succeeded in teaching Dodge to fetch a ball. Koda does it naturally, he was fetching and returning toys from the day I got him. But Dodge just doesn't get it I have no idea how you'd teach Bruno, but I'm interested if anyone has any ideas.

I had to break it down into small bits and practice in front of dinner (or something really high value)...

So I'd start with Frosty drooling in front of her dinner and I'd put the fetch about 1m that way... ideally something that doesn't roll eg ball in a dead sock... and I'd send Frosty in that direction - get it... and if she went near the ball - I'd reward her for going near it... and gradually increase my criteria so she'd have to touch it, then mouth it then pick it up then bring it over...

I'd try for about five attempts (or treats) for each task. So the first night would be looking at it or going over to it...
then second night would be touching it (nose or paw)
third night - touching it with her mouth
fourth night - picking it up...
I'd keep all the distances very very small and the reward at the end of a session - very very high eg dinner. With some awesome treats for the attempts that moved in the right direction.

You might think this is a tad tedious but it is fun when the dog finally figures out what you want and brings the dead sock-ball.

and then you have to keep upping the criteria.
I had to work on not spitting out the thing for a treat ie hold the thing until I say "give"... or you dog get nothing.
I often had a second cue for that like "can't reach"...

Try not to add the "fetch" cue until the dog is bringing the thing and putting it in your hand on the "give" command.

When I'm at the beach - I ask her to sit or drop facing the direction I intend to chuck the ball - and she's supposed to stay there until I say "fetch" or "geddit" or "go"...

Nero kind of picked it up naturally. I just kept on throwing the ball for him whether he brought it back or not. When he was completely hooked on chasing it, I gradually stopped throwing it unless he brought it back. When he brought it back - accidently to start with - I'd throw it again immediately. Really immediately, no 'good boy', no treat nothing. Just pick up and throw in one motion. So he realised that he could continue the game that way.

It took him a while to catch on and he still sometimes needs reminders to 'get the ball' but he is generally pretty good now. Rox picked it up in no time only by watching Nero and is already better than he'll ever be!

Excellent. Bruno loves to chase the ball. He does occasionally pick it up but then loses interest and runs off again. Maybe he thinks its one of the ones that got snipped off and is looking for the other one.

I back chain...I teach the "take it" whilst sitting in front of me, the "hold it" again in front of me and the "thank you", which is the "give the ball to me" and also the "pick it up"...I do all of this in a quiet room and reward heavily intitially. Once they all work, I start to throw the item and say "pick it up" and "thankyou"...with some of my rescues that.... have naturally retrieved i have actually put them on long leads and brought them back to me, but some actually want to hang on too much..still swapping item for reward often works. Also for those that will initially not retrieve I shape..again sitting in a room and click and treat.initially look, go over, touch, mouth, really mouth and forever increasing what I click and reward. it is the slow way, but once they have it this way they usually love it, So I use all differnt methods for different dogs. From puppy is the easiest.

We train our dogs for Rescue work, s they have to learn to take items, retrieve items/people/boats and take items to strangers.
It can be quite hard to train some and others just have it naturally. We also teach our dogs what the items are by name and this we teach by call the items always the same name, initially one, on to tow and so on. It is amazing how many words a dog can learn, espcially our BC cross.......

We initially were heavily into Obedience training and trialling, but i found that the dogs we did that with were not self thinkers and problem solvers, so now we still teach Obedience and do our CD, but we now do a lot of water training (rescue type work) at the same time and allow our dogs to solve problems, more like we used to train our stock dogs, solve problems and do a lot of things naturally and encourage this and end up doing it on command. I truly think this is more a form of "shaping", we see something w like we reward and try to repeat